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...But the current appeal of machismo as political style, the wall-building and xenophobia, the mythology and race theory, the fantastical promises of national restoration – these are not cures, but symptoms of what is slowly revealing itself to all: nation states everywhere are in an advanced state of political and moral decay from which they cannot individually extricate themselves...

This trend seems to be spreading everywhere, even though it seems to be in a much more advanced - and worrisome - state in some Eastern European countries. In the Philippines, they elected a much more violent and radical version of Trump, not a buffoon, but a truly dangerous demagogue. In Brazil, the 2nd candidate for the presidential elections of this year with the largest % of voters according to the pool is a right-wing military politician, Jair Bolsonaro, with ultra-conservative and even in some cases violent opinions on many social issues and an awful background of aggressive language against LGBTs, leftists and women, and support for the 1964-85 military dictatorship and even for infamous torturers of that period. He once said that Brazil needs to "kill 30,000 people or so, including the President (then Fernando Henrique Cardoso)... of course some innocent people will die among those, but that's inevitable, at least after that we'll get rid of what's pulling our country backwards and advance". Comments like this, which are many and regular, are pretty unquestionably fascistic in my opinion (and that of many other people, of course).

So, what I mean is that there is some worldwide trend that is favoring those right-wing demagogues who propose drastic, aggressive and supposedly costly but effective solutions to the growing concerns and structural chronic issues of their countries. We really need to understand what's happening in common among all those different nations and cultures, something that has favored the more radical candidates almost everywhere.

This trend seems to be spreading everywhere, even though it seems to be in a much more advanced - and worrisome - state in some Eastern European countries. In the Philippines, they elected a much more violent and radical version of Trump, not a buffoon, but a truly dangerous demagogue. In Brazil, the 2nd candidate for the presidential elections of this year with the largest % of voters according to the pool is a right-wing military politician, Jair Bolsonaro, with ultra-conservative and even in some cases violent opinions on many social issues and an awful background of aggressive language against LGBTs, leftists and women, and support for the 1964-85 military dictatorship and even for infamous torturers of that period. He once said that Brazil needs to "kill 30,000 people or so, including the President (then Fernando Henrique Cardoso)... of course some innocent people will die among those, but that's inevitable, at least after that we'll get rid of what's pulling our country backwards and advance". Comments like this, which are many and regular, are pretty unquestionably fascistic in my opinion (and that of many other people, of course).

So, what I mean is that there is some worldwide trend that is favoring those right-wing demagogues who propose drastic, aggressive and supposedly costly but effective solutions to the growing concerns and structural chronic issues of their countries. We really need to understand what's happening in common among all those different nations and cultures, something that has favored the more radical candidates almost everywhere.

Yep it's like what people say "history repeats it's self" Brazil needs the right government to move on from what happened in the past but sadly it's easier said then done.
In the Philippines if you got weed, you dead!

Yep it's like what people say "history repeats it's self" Brazil needs the right government to move on from what happened in the past but sadly it's easier said then done.
In the Philippines if you got weed, you dead!

Anyways congratulations on being a Moderator!!

Seems like people got tired of awaiting for the realization of the many promises of the democratic regimes and are looking for supposedly "faster", more strong-handed solutions. But oh boy, they did exactly that in the past more than once and they always, unfailingly, got trapped into even worse regimes. The people as a whole don't seem to learn much from their own history.

By the way, thanks very much, man! I hope to make a useful and fair job here.

I still can't believe people want to be sent back to medieval times, would they be happy to have guards barging into peoples homes and sending them off to the dungeon for not praying to the right god or being forced to break rocks or pick peas for the local Baron in his cozy castle? They should really question whether these newly elected power hungry maniacs are "in it" for the nation (and not for themselves).

I really don't understand what makes Orban worse than the typical center-right / center-left EU politicians. He is just more honest.

A madman said this, but it has a ring of truth:

“The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.”

"As we have already stressed, the mass evacuation of the Albanians from their triangle is the only effective course we can take. In order to relocate a whole people, the first prerequisite is the creation of a suitable psychosis. This can be done in various ways." - Vaso Cubrilovic

This trend seems to be spreading everywhere, even though it seems to be in a much more advanced - and worrisome - state in some Eastern European countries. In the Philippines, they elected a much more violent and radical version of Trump, not a buffoon, but a truly dangerous demagogue. In Brazil, the 2nd candidate for the presidential elections of this year with the largest % of voters according to the pool is a right-wing military politician, Jair Bolsonaro, with ultra-conservative and even in some cases violent opinions on many social issues and an awful background of aggressive language against LGBTs, leftists and women, and support for the 1964-85 military dictatorship and even for infamous torturers of that period. He once said that Brazil needs to "kill 30,000 people or so, including the President (then Fernando Henrique Cardoso)... of course some innocent people will die among those, but that's inevitable, at least after that we'll get rid of what's pulling our country backwards and advance". Comments like this, which are many and regular, are pretty unquestionably fascistic in my opinion (and that of many other people, of course).

So, what I mean is that there is some worldwide trend that is favoring those right-wing demagogues who propose drastic, aggressive and supposedly costly but effective solutions to the growing concerns and structural chronic issues of their countries. We really need to understand what's happening in common among all those different nations and cultures, something that has favored the more radical candidates almost everywhere.

Social behaviour and its influence on politics is like a pendulum that swings from right to left, in political dimensions. Any bigger economic and political crises will scare people into more conservative approach to life and that includes isolation from the bad world, building walls, voting against emigration, and going into economical isolation. We have a big does of economic and financial wows and huge migration and terrorism in last decade. This influenced people into voting right.
In next decade when we have long economic expansion, improved family finances, and less terrorism, this should swing voters into more liberal, tolerant and open position.
Think pendulum.

Be wary of people who tend to glorify the past, underestimate the present, and demonize the future.

he was elected with the help of Angela Merkels naivity and stupidity
she listened to much to those overpaid UN officials in their ivory towers

both sides are stupid, it's the pendulum swinging the other way
and yes, still a lot of those illegals in Europe still are to be sent back, it's a long and costly procedure

I hold no brief for Donald Trump.

I think he's a buffoon, and he's erratic and temperamentally unsuited for the job, imo. That's why I didn't vote for him. He's not, however, although it may appear so to Europeans, a right wing nationalist of the type taking power in eastern Europe. He's not a fascist, whatever the hysterical voices on the left here might say. Europe has a long history of fascism, and in eastern Europe, in particular, monarchies were succeeded by fascist governments, and then by Communist totalitarianism with only a few decades here and there of democracy. They also have a long history of genocidal anti-semitism which could easily turn into murderous anti-Middle Easterner. What could easily happen there could never happen here.

I know Europeans and I know Americans equally well and the differences are profound.

I think he's a buffoon, and he's erratic and temperamentally unsuited for the job, imo. That's why I didn't vote for him. He's not, however, although it may appear so to Europeans, a right wing nationalist of the type taking power in eastern Europe. He's not a fascist, whatever the hysterical voices on the left here might say. Europe has a long history of fascism, and in eastern Europe, in particular, monarchies were succeeded by fascist governments, and then by Communist totalitarianism with only a few decades here and there of democracy. They also have a long history of genocidal anti-semitism which could easily turn into murderous anti-Middle Easterner. What could easily happen there could never happen here.

I know Europeans and I know Americans equally well and the differences are profound.

I'm very worried about how things will go.

ok, and I'm not a supporter of Orban
but is he a fascist?
what did he do to deserve this title?

Thank god for Hungary and Poland. At least they have the good sense to defend the integrity of their nations. Yes, Europe was born from 4 widely divergent populations. But this is no argument for swamping the West with foreign peoples & hostile cultures. A two-thousand year civilization is at stake.

There is nothing "democratic" about mass immigration into Western nations. When did the people ever vote for this? On the contrary, it was imposed from above by globalist elites.

But when Hungary stands up against this, people call them Fascists. As though they were the enemies of democracy. Such utter insanity. As though we are supposed to sit like idle sheep as we are systematically replaced, not by war, not by disease, but by the policies of our ruling elites.

Social behaviour and its influence on politics is like a pendulum that swings from right to left, in political dimensions. Any bigger economic and political crises will scare people into more conservative approach to life and that includes isolation from the bad world, building walls, voting against emigration, and going into economical isolation. We have a big does of economic and financial wows and huge migration and terrorism in last decade. This influenced people into voting right.
In next decade when we have long economic expansion, improved family finances, and less terrorism, this should swing voters into more liberal, tolerant and open position.
Think pendulum.

That's right, but I also think this stronger and especially louder conservative wave is also at least partly a sign of fear or hatred against the very evident (despite high and low points) trends of at least some countries like Brazil in the last few decades, a tendency toward noticeably more liberal and progressive points of view especially in matters of social and individual behavior. People who were already conservative, even if unconsciously so, weren't that loud and angry, not here anyway, even 15 years ago.

These last 15-20 years were exactly the time when the conservatives became much more dogmatic, well organized and noisy, but also the very same period when the public opinion of the majority of Brazilians shifted decisively to positions that were unthinkable just 2 generations ago and certainly minor enough to be relatively harmless only 1 generation (~25 years) ago. The growth in the support for typically progressive stances was, in historic terms, too rapid, and the fact that we had 4 successive leftist governments that were more or less supportive of most of those progressive aims only made things worse for the conservative part of the population, that started to feel seriously intimidated and even trapped into a slow but continuous "revolution" of social mores that sounds horrifid to them.

So, in a way I think that this conservative wave we're seeing is not just part of that pendulum caused by an alternation between moments of decline and progress, but also quite literally a reactionary wave even more than a conservative one, that is, there is a growing fear among certain parts of the population that the society is changing too fast and is clearly heading to a mindset and way of life that is totally unlike what they were used to and taught that is the right one. The reaction that sounds so loud and even aggressive can be , in some aspects, more of a desperate cry.

Thank god for Hungary and Poland. At least they have the good sense to defend the integrity of their nations. Yes, Europe was born from 4 widely divergent populations. But this is no argument for swamping the West with foreign peoples & hostile cultures. A two-thousand year civilization is at stake.

There is nothing "democratic" about mass immigration into Western nations. When did the people ever vote for this? On the contrary, it was imposed from above by globalist elites.

But when Hungary stands up against this, people call them Fascists. As though they were the enemies of democracy. Such utter insanity. As though we are supposed to sit like idle sheep as we are systematically replaced, not by war, not by disease, but by the policies of our ruling elites.

Oh boy, do you really think people would criticize him so much just because he wants to restrict the present levels of immigration. Never mind that Hungary was NEVER and is not a major destination of legal or illegal non-European immigrants in Europe, so all this anti-immigration panic is even a bit funny in the eyes of foreigners who know all too well that the vast majority of foreign immigrants in Hungary will just use it as bridge towards their preferred destinations like Germany, Switzerland and Sweden. It's also a bit funny, or rather ironic that, as the stats clearly demonstrate, the biggest threat to Eastern European "civilization" is the combination of extremely low birth rates with very high EMIGRATION - no, not immigration - rates driving increasingly negative population growth in most nations. By the way, I didn't know this civilization is apparently so weak that it needs to be transmitted via DNA, not by acculturation of people, regardless of their ancestry... but nobody - neither the left nor the right-wing - wants to discuss the boogeyman that is the urgent need of better cultural integration and [later] assimilation.

So what about little "democratic" changes brougth by the government of Orban like this? Do you really think people would be so wary of his government's democratic credential just because he favors a conservative and more restricted policy of immigration? The problem is way bigger than that little controversy.

In March 2013, Parliament amended the constitution for the fourth time, on a 265-11 vote, with Fidesz, the Christian Democrats and three independents in favor and the Socialists boycotting the vote; there were also 33 abstentions.[47][48] Subsequently, President János Áder signed the amendment into law, citing his legal duty and the need to preserve national unity.[49][50] The fifteen-page amendment touches on several aspects. It annuls rulings of the Constitutional Court made before the 2011 constitution went into force, while allowing their legal effects to remain. It endows the president of the Kuria and the chief prosecutor with the power to initiate constitutional review of laws. While giving the Constitutional Court the power to review the constitution itself on procedural grounds, it stipulates that the court cannot annul a law passed by a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Judges and prosecutors are obliged to retire at the general retirement age, although that age is left unstated; the Kuria head and the chief prosecutor are exempt. The amendment enshrines freedom of religion and allows constitutional complaints regarding the church law. It allows civil lawsuits for hate speech targeting an individual's community, and declares that communism is condemned. The measure requires students whose education is subsidized by the state to work in Hungary for a period after graduation or reimburse their tuition costs to the state. It allows only public media to air political advertising prior to general and European elections. The importance of the traditional family is stressed, and authorities are empowered to ban living in certain public spaces, although homelessness is not outlawed. A prior proposal on requiring voters to register prior to elections was not included after being earlier voided by the Constitutional Court.[51]

The growth in the support for typically progressive stances was, in historic terms, too rapid, and the fact that we had 4 successive leftist governments that were more or less supportive of most of those progressive aims only made things worse for the conservative part of the population, that started to feel seriously intimidated and even trapped into a slow but continuous "revolution" of social mores that sounds horrifid to them.

Exactly how I rationalise it too.

So, in a way I think that this conservative wave we're seeing is not just part of that pendulum caused by an alternation between moments of decline and progress, but also quite literally a reactionary wave even more than a conservative one, that is, there is a growing fear among certain parts of the population that the society is changing too fast and is clearly heading to a mindset and way of life that is totally unlike what they were used to and taught that is the right one. The reaction that sounds so loud and even aggressive can be , in some aspects, more of a desperate cry.

I think the morals, social and political views, get reset with every new generation. Everybody's "compas" gets set during childhood and adolescence. The ideas and the world views learned at this time become base, the norm. The new conservatism.
That's why every old generation complains about the bad, worth nothing, new generation, but reminises their perfect world of their youth. "In my days..."
Also, this is why the new generation growing up with mixed races and in multiculturalism will be much more open, inclusive and tolerant, than old generation, which grew up in uniform ethnic group or separatism of some kind.

To tie it to this thread, Eastern European countries are much more uniform culturally and racially, than Western Europe ones, which doesn't help to open them to emigration, or plant in Western ideas of tolerance to "the others". Recent history of hyper nationalism in these countries against Soviet Russia, is not helping the situation either. They are hyper sensitive to their newly recovered independence and national identity.

To tie it to this thread, Eastern European countries are much more uniform culturally and racially, than Western Europe ones, which doesn't help to open them to emigration, or plant in Western ideas of tolerance to "the others". Recent history of hyper nationalism in these countries against Soviet Russia, is not helping the situation either. They are hyper sensitive to their newly recovered independence and national identity.

good point

and seeing that immigration was not beneficial to western Europe won't help either